Food Services

As the food services provider for the East Hartford Public Schools, the Sodexo team is focused on student well-being and believes that healthy, well-balanced meals are integral to student success. Sodexo offers meals that are both nutritious and delicious, as well as provides educational components to help students understand health and nutrition, food sustainability and farm to school programs. We are proud to partner with the East Hartford Public Schools.

School Foods for East Hartford Public Schools is provided by Sodexo Food Services.

If you have any questions, please contact:

Shari-Lynn Staeb
General Manager
On-Site Service Solutions
East Hartford Public Schools
Office 860-568-4252shari.staeb@sodexo.com

Effective June 18, 2018 students attending East Hartford Public Schools will participate in the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) and will receive free school meals through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP). Household applications for Free/Reduced meals are eliminated.

Participation in CEP does not include Two Rivers Magnet Middle School and the Odyssey Community School which are interschool agreement sites through East Hartford Public Schools.

We need your help to make sure all of our students are fully prepared for academic success. We all know that hungry children have a more difficult time doing their best work. That is why we encourage all students to begin the school day with a nutritious breakfast.

The School Breakfast Program is available to all students every weekday morning. Your child can eat breakfast at school every day or only occasionally. School breakfast makes good sense - it provides ¼ of your child's nutritional needs, meets Dietary Guidelines recommendations, and offers children a chance to eat breakfast with their friends.

School Breakfast is an ideal solution on busy mornings when kids are running late or parents have to be at work early. Whatever the reason, if breakfast at home is not convenient, please have your child take advantage of breakfast here at school.

Thank you for helping us to make sure that all of our students start the school day alert, well fed and ready to learn.

East Hartford Public Schools and New Covenant United Methodist Church BackPackers Program

Each year we see students within our community and school district that for one reason or another do not have sufficient amounts of food to eat over the weekend. The East Hartford Public Schools and the New Covenant United Methodist Church have agree to support our initiative to provide weekend backpacks with food donations to be available for students in need in our community. As the School’s Food Service contracted vendor and as part of Sodexo’s “Stop Hunger Campaign” a group of Sodexo employees have volunteered to pack and distribute these backpacks to students in the school district.

The mission of our “BackPackers” program is:

“To stop hunger faced by children on weekends by providing them non-perishable foods in backpacks”.

Officials in each participating school identify needy students that fit the criteria for the program. Student confidentiality is of the utmost importance.

Non-Perishable food is purchased from the Greater Hartford Foodshare Food Bank and put into backpacks by the Sodexo team for distribution each Friday. The participating students pick up their backpacks at a designated location in the school and take them home over the weekend. The backpacks are returned to the school the following Monday to be restocked and redistributed the following weekend.

This program is a proven success in East Hartford

Sponsors fund the program and each year our collaboration increases. Our NCUMC sponsor, and our East Hartford Hunger Action Team participate in the Walk for Hunger in Hartford for Food share with a percentage of the proceeds benefiting the backpackers program.

It is never too late for a student to join the program. More information regarding the program may be obtained by contacting the Sodexo Food Service Office at 860.568.4252.

With current national attention being focused on children’s health and wellness issues, East Hartford Public School District’s Food Service Department is excited to provide parents/guardians a convenient, easy and secure online prepayment service to deposit money into your child’s school meal account at any time. This service also provides parents/guardians the ability to view your student’s account balance through a web site called MySchoolBucks.com.

By having money in each student’s account prior to entering the cafeteria, we find the lunch lines move along much faster so your student has more time to eat and be with friends. Also, parents/guardians will have the ability to print out a copy of their student’s eating history report. This history report will show you all dates and times that your student has purchased a breakfast and or lunch within the past thirty days.

Please refer to the parent training guide on the Food Services Homepage for further information

From this site you will be able to create your account and add money to your student’s school meal account. All you need is your student’s name, student ID number and school ZIP code. Please choose East Hartford as the district

Things to know:

If you have more than one student in the District you can handle all online prepayments from the same online account.

Payments may be made through an existing PayPal account or with a major credit or debit card.

In order to use the online prepayment service, a convenience fee for each transaction will be assessed to cover the bank fees. Parents/guardians placing money into multiple meal accounts will only be assessed the convenience fee once per deposit transaction.

East Hartford Public Schools District will not profit from the use of this site.

We are very excited to offer these services, however, if you choose not to take advantage of the online prepayment service you may continue to make advance payments via cash or check, which should be made payable to: East Hartford Public Schools. Please write your student’s full name on the check. If you have any questions about these new services, please feel free to contact School Food's office at 860.568.4252.